Baton Rouge’s Capitol Lakes being investigated again as possible Superfund site | Environment

Should Capitol Lakes, the four connected lakes at the backdoor of the State Capitol building in Baton Rouge, be considered hazardous waste sites because of their contamination with cancer-causing chemicals? 

That’s the question the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality quietly asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency to answer in March 2021, after equally quietly concluding it was time to reverse its 2002 decision that the lakes’ pollution was too low to cause health hazards. 

An EPA spokesperson confirmed this week that the federal agency has begun looking into whether and how to address potentially dangerous chemicals in the water. If the EPA finds enough contamination at the site, it could include the lakes in its Superfund program, an initiative that cleans sites that pose threats to humans and the environment. 

The agency’s review will include an “expanded site inspection,” with sampling for contaminants in areas possibly left untouched in past investigations, spokesperson Jennah Durant said. 

“The additional areas that will be sampled include drainage pathways that flow into Capitol Lakes,” she said. The agency also plans to collect sediment and fish tissue samples, Durant added; a report on its findings could be released in late summer. 

If the lakes or the rainwater runoff that enters them are found hazardous, money for their remediation could come from a trust fund used to pay for Superfund site cleanups. The federal government would then try to recoup their expenses from parties potentially responsible for the contamination. 

A spokesperson for Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said that while the EPA did not notify the city of the change in status for the lakes, city officials are not surprised.

“It’s old news that the lakes are contaminated,” Mark Armstrong said. “We certainly favor any steps that might be taken to improve the environment out there.”

There are presently 13 active Superfund sites in the state, with another three sites proposed for Superfund listing. The state has delisted 13 sites from Superfund since the program began in 1980. 

The Capitol Lakes were formed between 1901 and 1908 when Grassie Bayou was dammed near its entrance to the Mississippi River, creating a 4½-square-mile drainage sump in what would become the state capitol area of Baton Rouge. 

The lake system has served as a collection area for urban runoff ever since, receiving drainage from two unnamed canals. The only outlet for the lakes is a parish pumping station that empties into the river.

Concerns about pollution in the lake date back to the early 1970s and included a 1981 investigation that found Kansas City Southern Railroad to be a source of oil contamination. More testing in 1983 identified oily wastewater containing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs — toxic chemicals that were used as oil for electric transformers. Those were found in a drainage canal next to a Westinghouse Electric Corp. transformer repair facility on Choctaw Drive.

It was determined that the contamination was coming from both spillage and a leaking underground storage tank, and that the PCBs were present in runoff water, canal water and water in the center of the main Capitol Lake, as well as in fish tissue samples.

A broader probe of the lake’s pollution resulted in enforcement actions and compliance orders filed against a number of corporations, including the Kansas City railroad, Furlow-Laughlin Equipment Company Inc., American Asphalt Corporation, and the city and parish, among others. Still, none of those facilities were determined to be the source of PCBs, according to a 2018 state water quality report.

That report said that in addition to the Westinghouse site, possible sources of PCB contamination included the Louisiana Division of Administration Surplus Property Yard, U.S. Government Surplus Property Yard, and the Louisiana National Guard Armory, all located east of Capitol Lake.

By the end of 1986, Westinghouse removed PCB-contaminated soils from its property and took other actions to limit its runoff from reaching the lakes.

In 2002, sampling of lake water, lake sediments, and the tissues of a number of fish species in the lake system found PCB levels greater than 5 parts per million, then the federal Food and Drug Administration limit for the chemical. A health advisory was later issued prohibiting the eating of fish from the lakes.

But DEQ also issued a statement of “no further action” in June 2002, concluding that “contaminate concentrations in the lake system sediments and edible fish tissues will continue in a pattern of marginal decline with elapsed time, as has been the experience during the past decade.”

Despite that 2002 decision, the Louisiana Department of Health and DEQ have kept in place a ban on consuming fish from the lake because of potential contamination with PCBs. The ban was reaffirmed through additional fish sampling in 1994 and 2018.

Signs declaring the lakes a no-fishing area remain in place in several locations on their shorelines.

Asked what prompted the recent request for EPA to investigate the lakes, state environmental quality spokesman Gregory Langley would only say the agency was working with EPA to suss out the lake’s current pollution levels, and he pointed to documents in the state’s public online database for more information.

“If anything changes, all interested parties will be notified,” Langley said.

Two brief letters in DEQ’s database, both dated March 23, 2021, address the state’s decision to contact EPA.

The first is a one-page internal memorandum signed by Estuardo Silva, administrator of the state agency’s remediation division, announcing the reversal of the 2002 “no further action” decision.

“It was assumed that natural attenuation would result in a marginal decline in sediments and fish tissues over time,” the memo said. “However, more recent LDEQ sampling has shown that concentrations of contaminants of concern remain at levels that preclude the use of this water body.”

Attenuation is a breakdown of the contaminant chemicals into less dangerous or safe substances. Older pesticides like DDT and dieldrin, and the insulating chemical PCB, have been known to slowly break down into less dangerous chemicals naturally, as they are exposed to sunlight or living organisms in water or soils.

The memo said that the department would transfer the site to an EPA Region 6 site assessment team for further evaluation, and that as result, the site was returned to a confirmed contamination status in state records. 

The second document was a letter to Susan Weber, chief of EPA’s Region 6 assessment and enforcement branch, saying the state “has completed several investigations” of the lakes, and “current information indicates that this location may be better addressed” under the federal Superfund program. The three-paragraph note pointed EPA officials to the documents in the state online database.

Also in that database was an EPA form signed Jan. 11 by Louisiana Public Lands Administrator Cheston Hill granting EPA staffers access to a large swath of state-owned land in Baton Rouge, including the four lakes and properties surrounding them.

Also in the database were photos taken by DEQ inspectors in November 2021 and January 2022 that show a man fly fishing in one lake, fishing line and hooks snagged in a tree adjacent to another lake, and a drainage pump station that drains water from the lakes into the Mississippi River. 

DEQ did not announce its changed opinion on the lake system last year. Nor did it say it had requested a new Superfund investigation, or that it gave the EPA the greenlight to inspect the lakes earlier this month. 

The changes were also news to the Baton Rouge Audubon Society, which is working with state officials and other organizations to update the state’s 20-year-old birding trail system. The trails along Capitol Lake are being considered for that system, said Erik Johnson, the chapter’s director of conservation science.

“Capitol Lakes is a popular birdwatching destination for locals and visitors alike, and offers great views of a variety of water birds,” he said, adding that the lakes’ contamination remains a concern. “You can imagine kids on family trips playing on the lawns next to the lakes.”

DEQ also did not notify the state Legislature of the changes, Langley said. In 1997, the Legislature added a section to the state’s environmental regulations that required the lakes to be cleaned up “immediately.”

“The legislature declares that the cleanup and removal of the contaminants in the sediments in the lakes is a priority of the state and that the Department of Environmental Quality should move expeditiously to require the cleanup to commence immediately.”

A provision in that section required DEQ to issue monthly status reports on remediation efforts for the lakes, which was to be delivered to the office of the governor, the House and Senate environment committees, the speaker of the house, president of the senate and the senator and representative who represent the lakes area.

The last of those reports was sent to state officials on May 26, 1999, notifying them of the expected publication the next month of new surveys on which the 2002 “no further action” status change was based. Langley said no additional reports were filed following the status change.